musings on the state of play of the planet. Favourite music and much more.

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

gagga with a Gaggia

Today, a brand new sparkling coffee machine arrived for those expresso's late at night, in the morning and of course in the early evening. However, the instructions must have been put together by NASA as I am having a bit of a carry on putting it all together and sorting out the programming. I will persevere though as no pain no gain.

Having a HUGE clear out and putting a lot of stuff up on ebay...partly to pay for the coffee machine..amazing what people buy. You probably read about the pretzel , see the slide show right here, shaped supposedly like Mary with the baby Jesus...it looked more like a road map of Manchester..but it sold for megabucks to some Casino that saw an advertising opportunity...so I ain't going to mention them by name as they have had loads of plugs already.

Parted with lots of vinyl...time to pack them off to the Charity Shop. No regrets as I saw Led Zeppelin 1-4, Rod Stewart's Atlantic Crossing (did I actually purchase this??? Oh My!! taste in music was a bit out of sorts in those days). disappear out the door. I have harboured piles of the stuff for years, but now being mainly a CD and MP3 grrl , can't see myself lugging out Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades from the loft to play at afternoon soirees.Spending the day chilling out and chilling a bottle of Cote du Rhone....raining ...so won't get into the garden.I've been checking out a lot of traditional music , first up from Torphins in Aberdeenshire is a fine fiddler Paul Anderson. Here he plays the work of famous player Hector MacAndrew.

You can hear the North East style on these tunes. It's fairly ornamental with use of classical bowings, stacatto, unisons, double stops, in fact pretty difficult all round. One of the earliest exponents of the style, William Marshall, said he 'did not write music for bunglers'. There was a huge expectation then that your playing was at virtuoso level. See what you make of Paul's efforts.

I have a soft spot for Neil Young. I couldn't part with his vinyl copy of 'After the Gold Rush' after the HUGE clear out. It was the first album I bought with money from a Sat. job. I used to inspect the cover for hours on end , wondering about his eyesight , and how it must be weird to see the world as he portrays it on the album sleeve. Aah, what you loose with Mp3..and no album covers that you can use as a frisbee on a weekend.Here's a funky reworking with Buffalo Springfield from a favourite CD FSUK VOL 3.